In addition to high costs, one of the major issues with the current breed of solar panels is efficiency: they simply don't collect most of the available light. But in the next five years the efficient of solar panels could take a drastic turn from 20 percent all the way up to 90 percent.

Associate professor Patrick Pinhero from the University of Missouri is developing a thin solar sheet that's able to capture around 90 percent of light it comes across and turn it into energy, using a special high-speed electrical circuitry.

"Our overall goal is to collect and utilize as much solar energy as is theoretically possible and bring it to the commercial market in an inexpensive package that is accessible to everyone," Pinhero told Science Daily. "If successful, this product will put us orders of magnitudes ahead of the current solar energy technologies we have available to us today."

The technology could be commercially available within the next five years.